Rants and Rambles feat. Some Books

Yesterday during our discussion, Maddie mentioned to me that she hates Robert Cohn. It interested me, because I don't dislike Cohn that much at all. After giving it some thought, it raised the question: is Cohn annoying because he actually is annoying, or because Jake paints him as annoying? In all honesty, this could be quite a subjective question. If there are aspects of Cohn's personality that are irritating to you because they irk you, then perhaps Cohn is inherently annoying. There are certainly some characteristics of Cohn that I think could be quite annoying in real life. There's always something about every person that will be annoying, but I think there's a case to made for Cohn being painted as more annoying than he actually is. We know Jake doesn't like Cohn. It comes out in various ways throughout the book. Cohn is presented as the annoying friend who can't take a hint, who doesn't really understand social cues, who's clingy. He's the...

Peter's pocketknife is one of the odder things about him. It seems that whenever he's unsure about a social interaction he pulls it out as a plaything. But noticeably, the times when Peter touches his pocketknife are when he's around women. One of the first experiences we get of Peter is when he arrives unannounced at Clarissa's house. Almost immediately after sitting down with her, he "[takes] out a large pocket-knife and half [opens] the blade" (39). In all honesty, my first thought with this was "is that knife a phallic symbol?" This thought lingered in the back of my mind throughout reading Mrs. Dalloway.  As the book progressed, I found more and more that it just somehow made sense for the knife to be symbolic of Peter's phallus.  The pocketknife is performing a sort of double symbolism in Mrs. Dalloway . It not only represents a phallus, but it also represents Peter's attraction to many women (and in some cases, his love for a ...